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Prosh Week is a University of Melbourne tradition, involving all manner of scarcely academic shenanigans. Fake funeral processions, rather large conga lines through the Melbourne CBD, lift parties and lecture stunts.

The highlight of the week is the scavenger hunt. Involving at least half a dozen teams and hundreds of the most creative, rowdy and recidivistic students of Melbourne University. I was a member of the illustrious TEAM ENG.

While fellow team mates got naked in public places, and constructed all manner of items with nothing but a computer, printer, cardboard and some sticky tape, I built the following…

Item 158 - An over engineered computer controlled vibrator:USB/bluetooth/Solar powered/UDP/TCPIP encouraged bonus points for it being really cool and if we can keep it for `research purposes’. 500, up to 6969 points.

I shall now detail how I constructed this item. The first order of business, right after the conga line, was acquiring a vibrator to modify. We went to Condom Kingdom in Melbourne Central at about 4pm. We had already been past there during the conga line, and were too soft to go to a proper, poorly-lit, sex shop. We bought a black battery operated vibrator for about $25. Then for about an hour we played with the vibrator, sneaking up on people, humping their heads and cock slapping them.

When we got tired of that, I dropped by home to see what parts I had lying around that I could make use of. I grabbed a cordless drill motor/gearbox, some aluminium tubing/sheet/rod, nuts and bolts, transistors, resistors, diodes, an old parallel port cable and a protoboard. I also grabbed my notebook computer, an IBM PIII 700, running Slackware Linux 10.1. I determined that the only other parts I would need to buy would be three relays, two 3 amp for two vibrate speeds, and one 5 amp for ‘thrust’.

All this stuff was brought back to TEAM ENG headquarters on campus, while I figured out what to do. The simplest way to make something computer controlled is using the parallel port. Use three data lines to operate three relays, with the coils switched using a PN2222 transistor, 1k resistor, and 1N4004 diode to prevent voltage spikes. Those three datalines can be controlled with a couple of lines of code.

First task was making the vibrator remotely switchable. I disabled the speed control adjust in the base, and brought a pair of wires out which were connected between the batteries in the vibrator - connect them, and the vibrator would turn on.

A built the circuit on the protoboard so that the parallel port could control the three relays. An old computer power supply was used to provide the +12V necessary for switching the relays.

At about 10pm, we took a break for the nude olympics.

Just after midnight, I managed to get the vibrator computer controlled. High speed with the relay directly directly shorting the vibrator wires, Low Speed with a 5 ohm resistor in series. The controlling software was just a command line program, to send one of two bytes to the parallel port to turn on the necessary relay.

Next I got stuck into the thrusting part. We had drawn out plans earlier in the day to work out if this was feasible, with the help of some mechanical engineering students in out midst. We decided on mounting the ‘thrusting rod’ through two sliding mounts, with another rod mounted to a circular plate on the gearmotor. Rather like an engine, where the gearbox/plate is the camshaft/cam, and the cylinder is the ‘thrusting rod’.

This design was realised using chipboard recycled from a construction hop nearby to make the base and sliding ‘thrusting rod’ plates. The ‘thrusting rod’ itself was made from 16mm aluminium tubing. The connecting rod between the ‘thrusting rod’ and rotating plate on the gearmotor was made from solid 8mm alumnium rod. The rotating plate was cut from 1.5mm aluminium sheet, and bolted onto the gearmotor shaft. Then an assortment of nylon spacers and 3mm bolts were used to connect the remaining moving parts.

At around 4am, the mechanics were finished and the machine thrusted when +5V from the computer power supply was connected to the gearmotor. By around 6am I had two vibrate speeds, and the thrusting motion, computer controlled.

Two tasks remained, creating a web interface, and mounting the vibrator to the end of the ‘thrusting rod’. I delegated the later task to another team member. The connection was made using three small squares of chipboard. One with a hole to mount to the end of the thrusting rod, and two with a hole to hold the base of the vibrator. The three were screwed together, bolted to the end of the ‘thrusting rod’ and the vibrator was glued into the other end using Liquid Nails (a construction adhesive).

The web interface was put together by first enabling the Apache webserver on my notebook computer. Software from here was modified, with separate cgi-bin scripts for each of the necessary control bytes. These were thrust/high-speed, thrust/low-speed, high-speed, low-speed, thrust and off. Now anyone on the network (we had a wireless router at the team eng base) could logon onto my computer with a browser and press any of these six buttons to control the vibrator. This was by about 9am. At this point I had been awake for 24 hours.

One team member had a bluetooth-enabled mobile phone, which could be used to control the mouse on his iBook. Load the web interface on the iBook, and there it was, a dual speed thrusting vibrator that could be controlled with a mobile phone, or with a little routing, from any computer on the internet. Victory for team eng was assured!

We brought the vibrator, power supply and computer to judging at noon, and set up an ad-hoc wireless network. One last test, and we were ready to go.

Before judging could take place, I had to disappear to attend a compulsory Electronic Circuit Design Lab at 2pm. I returned two hours later after the over-engineered vibrator had been judged. From what I heard, it was extremely well received. When the demonstrating team member pulled the mobile phone from his pocket on stage and powered up the vibrator from several meters away, the crowd went off. Figuratively speaking.

Sadly, there were no volunteers.

Results were announced at 11pm that night at a local pub. Mighty team eng lost to team psi-ence by some 3000 points. Their film items alone were entirely deserving. It’s difficult to convey just how hilarious porno sped up and set to the Benny Hill theme is. I drank some beer, soaked up some admiration, and at last went to bed at 1am on Saturday, having been awake for 40 hours.

Suggested Improvements:
- Flashing lights.
- Mood Music (’Sexual Healing’ for slow, ‘Horny’ for fast)
- Solar panel

Update 1/8/2006: Video now online.

Update 12/9/2005: Thanks all for your kind comments. To those wanting to talk shop, I must admit that after 18 hours straight, I would have been happy to never see the damn thing again. But after some reflection, I’m really quite proud of my achievement.

$$$ appeals, as does the thought of inciting strangers to interface their genitals to homebrew electronics. So work will continue, including a new, less silly design.

I have a one minute video, with thanks to T-Dohr, but don’t have the facilities to host it. If you can help, even by just seeding a torrent, please let me know.

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